ANDY BELL talks to Drowned In Sound about the making of both Nowhere and Going Blank Again, to his disillusionment with music after disbanding Hurricane #1, to working with the Gallaghers and the questions everyone keeps asking; will Ride and Oasis ever reform and take to the stage one more time.

GERMANY: A classified report by Germany's foreign intelligence agency says that insider attacks against NATO forces are likely to increase, the Taliban reintegration program will be ineffective, Afghan and US peace talks with the Taliban will go nowhere, Afghan president Hamid Karzai is more likely to defer to insurgents than institute needed reforms, and a greater commitment of foreign troops will be needed to stabilize the country after 2014.

SYRIA: In Homs, government forces evicted thousands of residents and then demolished their homes. Fighting spread across the old section of Aleppo. Government forces shelled towns in the eastern suburbs of Damascus.

AFGHANISTAN: With the surge of American troops over and the Taliban still a potent threat, American generals and civilian officials acknowledge that they have all but written off what was once one of the cornerstones of their strategy to end the war here: battering the Taliban into a peace deal.

A 25-LB DOG discovered in the engine compartment of a Chevy Silverado in San Clemente on Monday is doing fine, said to have survived a 110-mile journey on a hot autumn Southern California day with no apparent ill effects.

NEW RELEASES from The Vaccines, Matt & Kim, Mountain Goats, Heart and more are streaming this week at Spinner.

THIS MANY BOYFRIENDS, with references to Talking Heads, Orange Juice and the Pastels, is streaming their self-titled debut LP.

MUMFORD & SONS stopped by World Cafe to chat about how they achieved success. And, of course, they perform songs from Babel.

HOLY GHOST TENT REVIVAL, recalling '60s and '70s classic-rock influences such as The Band and The Flying Burrito Brothers, contemporary indie-rock acts like Dr. Dog, and New Orleans brass-band jazz, get featured by World Cafe: Next.

SAUDI ARABIA: In the Saudi version of Ikea's annual furniture booklet, all the women who appear in the catalog published in other countries have been removed via photo retouching.

SYRIA: In Homs, government forces evicted thousands of residents and then demolished their homes. Fighting spread across the old section of Aleppo. Government forces shelled towns in the eastern suburbs of Damascus.

AFGHANISTAN: US military deaths have reached 2000, a cold reminder of the human cost of an 11-year-old conflict that garners little public interest at home as the United States prepares to withdraw most of its combat forces by the end of 2014.

PATE REUNION WATCH: Conditions have created a significant risk of a band reunion occurring in early July 2013. Pate is looking for input from friends and fans via the Claude Pate Facebook page. I have also set up and will monitor PateBlog on the Twitter, as well as PateBlog -at- aol.com for email (laugh at the aol, but why not be period?). We'll also be looking to set up additional lines of communication as needed and as plans warrant. The last reunion was great; get involved to help get another one rolling!

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Hotel Transylvania tops the chart with 43 million, a record opening for September. A showing that strong sets up an interesting confrontation with Tim Burton's Frankenweenie next wekend. Looper places with a strong 21 million (against a 30 million budget), showing audiences were willing to give Joseph Grodon-Levitt and Bruce Willis a chance with a complex premise and a quirky director. Last week's champ, End of Watch, shows with 8 million, which is gravy against its low budget, especially given that the film was financed in part by both the Regal and AMC theater chains. Trouble With the Curve collects another 7.5 milion, holding pretty well (as I suspected last week). House At the End of the Street rounds out the Top Five with an 7.2 million, off 42 percent, but still a pretty good hold for a horror movie. Below the fold, Pitch Perfect (No. 6), on 335 screens, outgrossed Won't Back Down (No. 10) on 2515 screens. Ouch.

LOOPER: Director Rian Johnson brings us a movie we have not seen a million times before. I say that despite the trajectory of the plot being predictable -- a certain amount of that comes with the time-travel subgenre. But Looper is some old skool sci-fi, in the sense that it clearly aims to have the audience think about an issue larger than the plot. As such, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and a blonde Emily Blunt are given much more to do than fire their guns, though they do that a lot, to ultra-violent effect.

LIBYA: The US intelligence community is finally coming around to the conclusion that the Sept. 11 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was "a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists," and that "some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al Qaeda."

THE UNITED NATIONS: Muslim leaders were in unison arguing that the West was hiding behind its defense of freedom of speech and ignoring cultural sensitivities in the aftermath of anti-Islam slurs that have raised fears of a widening East-West cultural divide.

SYRIA: After several days of fighting, a rebel offensive in the city of Aleppo made little progress against more heavily armed government forces.

PATE REUNION WATCH: Conditions have created a significant risk of a band reunion occurring in early July 2013. Pate is looking for input from friends and fans via the Claude Pate Facebook page. I have also set up and will monitor PateBlog on the Twitter, as well as PateBlog -at- aol.com for email (laugh at the aol, but why not be period?). We'll also be looking to set up additional lines of communication as needed and as plans warrant. The last reunion was great; get involved to help get another one rolling!

HERBERT LOM, the versatile Czech-born actor who could play Napoleon Bonaparte or a witch hunter with equal aplomb but who was perhaps best known as Peter Sellers’s frustrated boss in the Pink Panther franchise (but was also great in the original version of The Ladykillers), died on Thursday at his home in London. He was 95.

TURKEY: Prime Minister Erdogan said he might be willing to negotiate with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which has been fighting for a separate Kurdish state since 1984 in a conflict that has killed over 40000 people so far.

SYRIA: Several thousand rebels fighters launched a "decisive attack" for control of the city of Aleppo. The Al Nusra Front claimed responsibility for the double suicide bombing of the Syrian Army headquarters in Damascus on Wednesday. More than 300 people died in Wednesday's fighting.

IRAQ: Al Qaeda in Iraq launched a suicide assault on the Tasfirat prison in Tikrit; one guard was killed. Security forces detained a senior terrorist in Baghdad. US special operations forces reportedly have deployed to Iraq to advise and train security forces.